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At odds with Hibbing et al., we argue that political ideology is best explained by at least two dimensions linked to economic and social ideology. In addition, Hibbing et al's claim that conservatism is grounded in a heightened sensitivity to negative outcomes, something closely tied to the personality trait of neuroticism, does not fit with the established personality correlates of political ideology. Conscientiousness and a lack of openness to experience are linked to conservatism but there is no established connection to neuroticism.

The bulk of the public opinion research on immigration identifies the factors leading to opposition to immigration. In contrast, we focus on a previously unexplored factor yielding support for immigration: humanitarianism. Relying upon secondary analysis of national public opinion survey data and an original survey experiment, we demonstrate that humanitarian concern significantly decreases support for restrictive immigration policy. Results from our survey experiment demonstrate that in an information environment evoking both threat and countervailing humanitarian concern regarding immigration, the latter can and does override the former. Last, our results point to the importance of individual differences in empathy in moderating the effects of both threat and humanitarian inducements.

Psychological reactions to terrorism are a central ingredient in any terrorist act (Crenshaw, 1986). One of terrorists' major goals is typically to instill anxiety in a target population in order to pressure political elites to negotiate (Friedland and Merari, 1985; Long, 1990). As noted by Long (1990), terrorists often “use the unreasonable fear and the resulting political disaffection it has generated among the public to intimidate governments into making political concessions in line with [their] political goals” (p. 5). In research on reactions to the September 11 terrorist attacks, we find that anxiety undermines support for an aggressive foreign policy, reinforcing the political importance of anxious reactions to terrorism (Huddy et al., 2005, 2007). In light of these findings, it appears that terrorists have a good grasp of psychological reality.

Anxiety is thus a critical component of public reactions to terrorism. Its documented ability to undercut support for aggressive overseas anti-terrorism policies is at odds, however, with the conventional notion that governments arouse anxiety precisely to increase support for overseas military action (Mueller, 2007; see also Pyszczynski et al., this volume). Indeed, the Bush administration in the United States and the Howard government in Australia have both been consistently accused of engineering support for the war in Iraq through the use of fear-mongering tactics such as terror emergency alert systems and high-profile arrests and deportations of Muslim immigrants.

Background: Home-fortification is a new strategy of adding micronutrients including zinc and iron to home-made foods. Zinc supplementation may prevent morbidity and mortality related to diarrheal illnesses, and iron supplementation may improve cognitive development, in children.

Objectives: To project clinical and economic effects of home-fortification in children in an urban slum of Karachi, Pakistan.

Methods: This is a cost benefit analysis of 5,000 simulated male and female infants (6–12 months) assigned to micronutrients or placebo for 4 months and followed for 55 years. We linked the effect of zinc on longitudinal prevalence of diarrhea to mortality, and the effect of iron on hemoglobin to IQ scores and lifetime earnings. Cost estimates were based on volumes of resource utilization from the Pakistan Sprinkles Diarrhea study. Main outcome was incremental benefit defined as the gain in lifetime earnings after accounting for the incremental costs of micronutrients over placebo (societal perspective).

Results: Our model projected that the reduction in diarrhea and improvement in hemoglobin concentrations through home-fortification was associated with reduced child mortality, higher IQ scores, and higher earnings. The present value of incremental benefit was $106 (95 percent probability interval = $17 to $193) U.S. dollars, which corresponds to $464.79 ($74.54 to $846.27) international dollars using a purchasing power parity exchange rate.

Conclusions: Home-fortification appears to improve clinical outcomes at a reasonable cost, and may actually be cost beneficial when lifetime earnings are considered.

Hurricane Katrina was a natural disaster that destroyed New Orleans, a
major U.S. city, and it is reasonable to expect all Americans to react
with sympathy and support for the disaster's victims and efforts to
restore the city. From another vantage point, however, Hurricane Katrina
can be seen more narrowly, as a disaster that disproportionately afflicted
the poor Black inhabitants of New Orleans. Past research demonstrates a
large racial divide in the support of issues with clear racial overtones,
and we examine the possibility of a racial divide in reactions to Katrina
using data from a national telephone survey of White and Black Americans.
We find large racial differences in sympathy for the hurricane's
victims, the adequacy of the federal government's response, and
support for proposed solutions to mend hurricane-ravaged New Orleans,
verifying the racial nature of the disaster. Blacks viewed the hurricane
victims more positively than did Whites, drew a sharper distinction
between and felt more sympathy for those stranded than for those who
evacuated New Orleans, and were substantially more supportive of
government efforts to improve the situation of hurricane victims and
rebuild New Orleans. This racial gap is as large as any observed in recent
polls; persists even after controlling for education, income, and other
possible racial differences; and documents more fully differences that
were hinted at in public opinion polls reported at the time of the
disaster. We spell out the implications of this divide for racial
divisions within U.S. politics more generally.

Some thirty years ago, Free and Cantril invoked the image of a psychological pathology to describe the state of American public opinion on matters of social welfare policy. In their words, public opinion displayed a “schizoid combination of operational liberalism with ideological conservatism” (Free and Cantril, 1967: 37). While many Americans expressed opposition to an expansive government and upheld the view that people should take care of their own problems, a large portion of these same Americans also indicated support for social welfare policies. Thus, while ideological backing for the idea of a welfare state was generally lacking, endorsement of the welfare state in practice – that is, at the level of policies – was strong.

More than thirty years later we still find much the same pattern in American public opinion. Numerous studies suggest that a majority of Americans favor many social welfare programs. Reviews of survey evidence show consistently high support for Social Security (Shapiro and Smith, 1985) and spending efforts by the government to reduce unemployment (Shapiro et al., 1987a). Government guarantees for jobs are met with less enthusiasm, although support for such policies is by no means lacking (Shapiro et al., 1987a). Even in the controversial domain of public assistance, support for a range of government programs has generally been high, indicating a general willingness of the American public to come to the assistance of the poor (Shapiro et al., 1987b; Weaver et al., 1995).

This chapter reviews the McPhee (1963) model of partisan dynamics in an election campaign. The model is used as a vantage point from which to address several questions. What is the relationship between social structure and the dynamics of political preference? What are the conditions under which social structure might generate either durability or change in the distribution of political opinion? How can we reconcile social influence and social structure with rational individuals and democratic citizenship?

What is the engine that drives the dynamics of public opinion and political preference during an election campaign? Should we focus on issues and issue development (Carmines and Stimson 1989)? On media coverage and agenda control (MacKuen and Combs 1981; Erbring, Goldenberg, and Miller 1980)? Or on the state of the economy and pocketbook voting (Tufte 1975; Kramer 1975; N. Beck 1989)? All these questions must be answered in the affirmative because each set of factors provides one answer to the question regarding why preferences change. Each explanation is persuasive, and others are as well, but all must be understood within the context of how people obtain and process information about politics.

How do people obtain political information? Do they depend primarily on politicians' speeches, newspaper editorials, Federal Reserve reports? Or is such information better seen as the raw stimuli of politics – stimuli that must be processed and integrated on the part of citizens?

Politics in a democracy revolves around the decisions of individual citizens, but individual citizens make their choices at particular times and places, located in multiple environments operating at a variety of levels. In this way the reality of a national election is played out in countless specific locations across the nation, and the behavior of individual voters is often best understood within these subnational locales. In keeping with such a perspective we have undertaken a study of voters and democratic elections at a particular time in a particular place: the 1984 presidential election as it occurred in the South Bend, Indiana, metropolitan area.

Voters in South Bend experienced the national spectacle of an election campaign during 1984, and, like all elections, the 1984 election was not a matter of individual choice for South Bend voters. It took place whether they desired it or not. Many South Bend residents would have preferred to spend their idle mental moments musing about the Cubs' pennant hopes, organizing next spring's garden, or planning sailing trips on Lake Michigan. Regardless of their own preferences, however, an election was taking place, and elections alter the lives of citizens who value democracy. Indeed, even citizens who do not take democratic responsibilities seriously are unable to avoid the altered environment of an election campaign: Dan Rather, the South Bend Tribune, bumper stickers, yard signs, party workers, candidate mailings, and informal discussions all served as inescapable reminders for South Bend residents.

To what extent do people impose their own political preferences on the search for political information? To what extent is such an effort limited by the availability of alternative information sources? This chapter develops a model of discussant choice that incorporates individual political preferences as they operate within the boundaries and constraints of the social context. Special attention is given to the consequences attendant on minority and majority preference distributions in the local social milieu. We argue that rational voters exhibit rational information search behavior, but the outcome of rational search is a compromise between individual political preference and socially structured discussion opportunities.

Citizens in a democracy exercise free choice when they obtain political information. They avoid some information sources and they seek out others based on their own political preferences and viewpoints. Indeed, the availability of informational alternatives is one of the defining characteristics of democratic politics. Liberals are free to read liberal newspapers and conservatives are free to read conservative newspapers. More important for this analysis, Democrats are free to seek out other Democrats as political discussion partners, and Republicans are free to seek out other Republicans. While this sort of free informational choice is central to democracy, it is also constrained by social structure. Free choice operates within opportunities and constraints that are imposed by the social context, and the central issues pursued here are two.

This chapter examines the political consequences that arise due to multiple and simultaneous bases of social experience. Two alternative contexts – those of neighborhoods and churches – provide an empirical setting for the effort; and the analysis focuses on two different political attitudes – policy preferences regarding abortion and partisan self-identification. Several questions are addressed: In what manner are the alternative contexts of politics different and in what manner are they similar? To what extent are churches and neighborhoods reinforcing in the political messages they convey, and to what extent do they serve as independent bases of social experience? How do individual differences and individual discretion mediate and deflect the impact of these alternative sources of political influence?

South Bend citizens live simultaneously in a variety of social worlds, any and all of which might have important political consequences. At one and the same time they are rooted socially in neighborhoods, workplaces, churches, clubs, and associations. Indeed, every citizen lies at the center of a social experience produced by a series of intersecting, overlapping, layered environments. Each of the environments, in turn, has potentially important consequences for politics because each serves to modify and deflect the opportunities and constraints that circumscribe social interaction – social interaction that serves as a vehicle for the transmission of political information and guidance.

Individuals and individual differences are important too – they are not simply artifacts of larger social forces.

The substantive and theoretical aims of this project give rise to a particular set of observational challenges, and the project's design is thus motivated by several theoretical imperatives. We are arguing that citizens are interdependent – that they obtain important political information through processes of social communication – and hence democracy and democratic politics occur at multiple levels of meaning and observation. An exclusive focus on isolated citizens runs the risk of ignoring the thorough-going imbeddedness that characterizes the individual acquisition of political information. An exclusive focus on social or political aggregates runs the risk of ignoring the nonadditive consequences of social and political interaction among citizens who constitute particular electorates. As a consequence, the theoretical focus of this book is on the citizen who resides within a particular social and political setting, who obtains political information from a limited menu of alternative choices, and who thus controls the flow of information only incompletely and imperfectly.

Such a theoretical perspective has observational consequences that are far from trivial. It is not enough, for example, to add a few more questions to an interview protocol soliciting citizens' perceptions of their environments. Indeed, one of the goals of this book is to understand more fully the manner in which these very perceptions are the product of a complex interplay among individual preference, attempts at individual control, and the external constraints imposed by a particular setting.

The goal of this chapter is to assess the dynamic consequences of social structure and social influence for the distribution of political preferences during an election campaign. Two questions are addressed: First, under what circumstances does social structure and social influence lead to durability and volatility in mass political preferences? Second, do different explanations for social influence necessarily lead to different conclusions regarding its dynamic implications?

The durability and volatility of political preferences are key issues in the study of mass political behavior, and identifying their origins is a major preoccupation within political research. But the relationship between social influence, social structure, and the dynamics of partisan preference has been a source of some confusion. Social structural explanations for political preference have been accused of “static social determinism” (Stokes 1966: 19) at the same time that particular political processes depending on social structure – bandwagon effects, behavioral contagion – are typically associated with volatile, rapidly changing preference distributions. Indeed, we have already argued that social influence might lead either to stable preferences or to rapid change, and the purpose of this chapter is to specify the circumstances under which social structure and social influence might give rise to durability and volatility in political preference distributions.

This chapter's analysis is primarily an exercise in exploring logical consequences. Several mathematical models are developed to examine the theoretical implications involved in different models of social influence.

What are the consequences of one-party politics for the behavior of individual citizens? How do these individual-level consequences serve to perpetuate one-party dominance? One important mechanism of this self-perpetuation is the institutionally disadvantaged position of the minority party, particularly with respect to the participatory incentives attached to primary election participation. Our argument is as follows: (1) The best way for a minority partisan to maximize her influence in a primary election is often to vote the majority party's primary ballot. But (2) as a result of such crossover voting the minority party loses an important manifestation of support – participation in its own primary election. And thus (3) the minority party demonstrates a level of support that greatly exaggerates the extent to which it is a minority. Furthermore, (4) many individuals who participate in majority party affairs by voting in majority party primaries are likely to develop loyalties to the majority party.

What are the consequences of local one-party politics for the behavior of individual citizens? How do these individual-level consequences serve to perpetuate one-party dominance? These questions are as important today as when they were first addressed by V. O. Key (1949), Alexander Heard (1952), Warren Miller (1956), and Robert Putnam (1966). Arguments to the contrary notwithstanding, American politics has not been fully nationalized, and American citizens do not reside in local communities that are politically indistinguishable. Indeed, relatively few of us live in communities that are genuinely competitive in local political contests.

The question arises quite naturally: What difference does it all make? We have argued that democratic citizenship involves something more than individually isolated and politically independent citizens making choices that are socially and politically divorced from their surroundings. Rather, citizens are fundamentally interdependent – they depend on one another for political information and guidance, and in the process of becoming informed they pass along distinctive interpretations and viewpoints. Moreover, the social communication of political information is itself subject to the political and social environment. Partisan dominance, party organization, and other organizational and institutional formations serve both to accelerate and impede the transmission and recognition of particular viewpoints. But if we are correct, does anything really change? Does the argument generate implications for political analysis in general and our understanding of democratic electoral politics in particular?

Perhaps the most important consequence lies in the ratification of something that Tip O'Neill knew all along: All politics is local politics. The Speaker may have had a different point of reference in mind when he made the observation, but our argument runs in a complementary direction. The point of reference for our own work is the construct of the national electorate. Journalists and pundits make reference to it, political scientists explain it, pollsters take its pulse. And while the concept of a national electorate is often quite useful, it remains an intellectual construct – a convenience for purposes of summarizing political behavior.